William Goldenberg on Editing 'Zero Dark Thirty'

“We finished Argo [2012] in June and the movie didn’t come out until October,” recalls William Goldenberg who immediately went from the historical thriller detailing the CIA rescue of six American embassy workers in Iran to the true life tale chronicling the decade long hunt for Osama bin Laden which fatally concludes in Pakistan.  “I was able to jump onto Zero Dark Thirty [2012] in the middle [of the production] but it meant having no time off.  I think I had a weekend.”

 The film editor did feel the weight of history when assembling the pictures.  “Of the two movies I did this year there was more pressure on Zero Dark Thirty because of the recentness of the events.”  Goldenberg notes, “You feel responsibility to doing justice to their stories and representing them in an appropriate way because they are real people and in both movies they are real people who are alive.”  The opportunity was too good to pass up.  “As an editor you want to work with the top directors and Kathryn [Bigelow] is right now one of the top few directors in Hollywood.  I’ve never worked with a woman director and thought that would be exciting.

 I thought that The Hurt Locker [2008] was great so when I heard about the possibility I was excited about it.  When it all came together I couldn’t be happier with prospect of working on it; that said the movie was pretty much shot when I came on it.  I came on in the middle of June and worked from June to December.  I didn’t meet Kathryn because she was Jordan shooting the raid when I first spoke to her about working on the movie.  We had one 40 minute conversation because she was busy and I spoke to Mark Boal for a brief time; they hired me based on that.  I didn’t even meet her until my first day for the movie; Kathryn had just come back from Jordan or London when they finished shooting.  It’s like, ‘Hi!  How are you? Glad that you’re on the movie.’  That was my first day at work.”

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